Feds arrest former detention center warden in Hidalgo

McALLEN — Federal agents arrested a former East Hidalgo Detention Center warden for his alleged role in a jail bond-reduction scandal that has toppled a justice of the peace and now implicates a state representative, according to a federal criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday.

Elberto Bravo, 55, was arrested Friday on a charge of accessory after the fact as part of a scheme to bribe former Hidalgo County Justice of the Peace Ismael “Melo” Ochoa so he’d reduce bond for a man accused of trafficking cocaine. The Mexican defendant was represented by an attorney who was unnamed in the criminal complaint, but state Rep. Terry Canales, D-Edinburg, has acknowledged the man was his client.

Canales said in a phone interview Tuesday that all the work he did for the client, including filing for bond reduction, complied with the law.

His lawyer said Canales, who was elected in 2012, neither gave nor took a bribe. He has not been charged.

In addition to Bravo, Syliva San Juanita Vasquez, 44, was charged with accessory after the fact in a separate but similar criminal complaint. She was arrested last week.

In what began as a federal investigation of a drug-trafficking organization, a Hidalgo County sheriff’s deputy made a traffic stop in February 2010 and found 89 kilograms of cocaine in a vehicle driven by Luis Martinez Gallegos, who was in the country illegally. Ochoa initially set bail at $2.5 million, but a month later reduced it to $50,000. Once out of jail, Martinez was deported and has not been prosecuted for what would have been a felony offense.

The criminal complaint against Bravo cites three confidential informants involved in the conspiracy, referred to as CI#1, CI#2 and CI#3. Informant CI#3 contacted Bravo to arrange a meeting with an unnamed “local attorney,” who because of his connections to Ochoa was capable of getting Martinez’s bond reduced. During the meeting the unnamed attorney placed a call to a person Vasquez believed to be a judge who was willing to reduce Martinez’s bail in exchange for $10,000.

Bravo allegedly met with the “local attorney” and the informant, while informant CI#1 provided about $100,000 to secure Martinez’s bond and “pay off” the judge, the attorney, CI#3 and any others involved in the scheme with money derived from narcotics sales, the complaint states.

It further alleges that Bravo took the money from CI#1 and delivered it to the attorney, stating “this was payment for arranging the bail reduction, and ensuring that the bond was posted so (Martinez) would be deported.” The complaint against Vasquez alleges she went to the attorney’s office with informant CI#3 to discuss the arrangements.

“What Sylvia (Vasquez) says is that she and some other folks were brought in to Terry to get (Martinez’s) bond reduced so that he could get deported, and that there was going to be a bribe to make that happen,” said John Ball, Canales’ attorney. “What I’m 100 percent certain of is that a bribe didn’t occur, it just didn’t happen. They may have believed that Terry was going to go and do something, they may have suggested to him to go do it, but it never occurred.”

Ochoa, 68, resigned in October after more than 20 years in office and pleaded guilty to bribery and money laundering for bribes taken between September 2010 and June 2012. In a plea deal, he was sentenced to 10 years’ probation.

Bravo was head of the detention center in La Villa until February 2012 when corporate owner LCS Corrections Services put him on leave.

Aaron Nelsen is based in McAllen and is responsible for covering the Rio Grande Valley. Before joining the San Antonio Express-News in 2013, he was a freelance reporter and the TIME Magazine correspondent in Chile. He has also been a staff writer for the Brownsville Herald.